Reflections on what a constitution means in times when we are tested.

When I was a boy, I thought power meant moving things with my mind. I would stand in the driveway, hold out my hand toward a basketball and wait for it to roll. I had seen enough heroes discover something hidden inside themselves to believe that, with enough focus, I might do the same. The ball never moved. But something in me did.

Years later, standing inside Colton Hall, where California’s first Constitution was drafted, I found myself returning to that childhood question: What does power actually move?

A constitution can declare freedom. It can name rights, divide authority and promise equality.

But it cannot lower a family’s rent. It cannot sit beside a mother choosing between groceries and medicine. It cannot return the hours taken from a worker whose life has become one long shift. Paper can hold a promise. Only people can give it a pulse.

Freedom has to become something people can feel.

At a Good Trouble rally in Monterey, organized by the League of Women Voters of Monterey County, Monterey County Democrats, 50501 Monterey and Unite Monterey County, we gathered to honor late Congressman John Lewis and Seaside’s own Helen Rucker on July 18.

Their lives remind us that history does not bend because people understand injustice. It bends when understanding becomes courage, when courage becomes service and when ordinary people decide that what exists is not the limit of what is possible.

The vote is not the finish line. It is the door to freedom. But freedom has to become something people can feel: A home they can afford, health care they can reach, work that leaves enough life left over to raise a child, care for an elder and dream beyond survival.

The cost of living is the cost of freedom. When a person works constantly and is still one emergency away from losing everything, they lose authorship over their own life. Their future begins to feel written by forces they cannot see and institutions they cannot reach.

That is not only an economic failure. It is a wound to dignity.

Democracy should do more than count us. It should help us remain human. It should expand our ability to consciously participate in what our lives, families and communities become. Politics becomes human when power protects possibility.

Good trouble begins wherever conscience becomes action. It may look like a ballot, a public comment, a union meeting, a neighbor arriving with groceries or a young person discovering that their voice can move more than a basketball.

You do not need a title to make history. You need the courage to enter it.

Colton Hall gave California a Constitution. Each generation must decide whether to leave it on paper or give it a conscience.

AYO BANJO works at the intersection of affordability, mental health and democratic power. He serves as vice chair of the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus for the Central Region and is the founder of Project Plenty, an initiative focused on helping government improve everyday lives.